News Broadcasting
Times Network’s MK Anand prioritises subscription over advertising model
NEW DELHI: On day one of the News Television Summit 2020, Times Network MD and CEO MK Anand had a few words of caution to offer: monetisation by ad sales is a huge steroid that the news business is running on and which it needs to get out of. Instead, he advocated subscription.
“When you go the subscription route, there is no need to be ratings-led. The current subscription numbers are 10x of what they were in 2014, when I joined Times. We have to benchmark ourselves on net distribution income (NDI). When it comes to NDI, a news channel should look at the top of the population pyramid more,” he said during a virtual fireside chat with Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari.
For instance, Times Network focuses on the top of the pyramid as it believes this is something the organisation needs to cater to, not because of a single-minded determination to chase numbers. “We are numbers-sensitive in the sense that we believe our ratings, our reach, our penetration has to be high. But I absolutely do not consider time-spent (TSV) as a driving factor at all,” he claimed.
Reach is a good driver, said Anand, adding that Times went from 300 headends when he joined the group to 3,000 plus in just two years.
Anand went on to reveal that 54 per cent of the Times Network’s revenue in FY21 is going to come from subscriptions. “The total ratings-led business in our topline is less than 25 per cent. Earlier it used to be 90 per cent. Back then we didn’t have branded content or premium-led ground or digital business. Now 14 per cent is from digital while 14-15 per cent is branded content. Specifically, Times Now’s TRP-led business is less than 11 per cent of the total.”
Wanvari quickly asked Anand if there’s a scenario where the Times Network converts its business model to 90 per cent subscription-led? Anand disagreed with that train of thought for the reason that the network’s audience is hot property for advertisers.
“Our audiences are premium and our reach management is very aggressive. For advertisers, 40-45 per cent of the top-end audience can only be met through Times Network’s English movies or English news channels. We may not depend on them for survival but that’s a very solid audience for us to monetise and one advertisers can’t do without,” he explained.
He went on to qualify that the ratio of ad sales (including digital) to subscription will settle at 40:60.
Anand also upheld rival channel CNBC as a solid example of a subscription-based brand, adding that when it comes to business news channels there isn’t a high degree of dependency on advertising.
“For niche channels, ratings do not matter. At Times, I have never, ever called up my editors and asked them why the ratings were up or down in any given week. I don’t believe that ratings are the be-all and end-all of right content,” he said.
Touching upon the television ratings measurement mechanism, Anand asserted that he genuinely believes in the process – it’s only certain unscrupulous players who are trying to manipulate the system and they must be dealt with.
“Whether it was Tam or BARC, I agree with the statistical and sampling processes. Lapses can happen anywhere but 99 per cent of the time it works. I don’t have a problem with the process. But content sensibilities are very different going down the population pyramid and it’s so much easier to get great numbers by continuously lowering the focus from the top of the pyramid to the bottom,” he added.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
